Abstract Detail

Floristics & Taxonomy

Rosen, Austin Marshall [1].

Floristic Inventory of the Rabbit Ears Range.

A vascular plant inventory was completed of the Rabbit Ears Range, a region of north central Colorado encompassing roughly 700 mi2. The region is along the continental divide of the southern Rocky Mountains, separating North Park from Middle Park, and ranges in elevation from approximately 7,500 ft to 12,301 ft. This inventory is the completion of previously unfinished work by Jim E. Tear, Jr., who made over 1,600 collections in the Rabbit Ears Range from 1993 to 1995, many of which were accessioned and deposited at the CSU Herbarium. However, numerous unidentified and non-accessioned specimens remained from these collections, which I identified using dichotomous keys and entered into the CSU Herbarium database. The Tear collections were then supplemented with an additional 4,035 vouchered specimens from the same study area, accessed from regional herbaria via the SEINet data portal. The 5,656 total collections examined comprise 75 families, 275 genera, and 707 species and subspecies. Thirteen species of conservation concern were identified, as well as 26 county records, 4 endemic species and 3 state-listed noxious weeds. In total, 52% of the vascular plant families present in Colorado were represented in the study area, comprising 23% of the 3,322 species and subspecies in Colorado. Native species and subspecies accounted for 89% of the biodiversity inventoried, the most biodiverse families being the Asteraceae, Poaceae, Cyperaceae, and Brassicaceae.